and a further point.

Federal government has no ability to respond to local issues, and in Australia that is a big impediment - so many different environments, local issues, and different industries and economies. The same will not necessarily work in Tasmania and the Northern Territory.

It would be a recipe for disaster and dischord to try to manage only at a national level.

phil - straw man. we have a significantly smaller population..and you want larger government? of course there should be local representation for goodness sake. but not HUGE duplication.

Now that they have a socialist government with an imcompetent Prime Minister, they want to do away with the states.

A spendthrift and failed insulation installer running the whole of Australia?

Gawd help us!

Do we need to get rid of state governments or just the over-regulation we seem to be in.

We are so over regulated at all levels of government.

Do we just need to standardise our legal, education and health services, then just have the state government entities of those just act as regional hubs, without the decision making power beyond good service delivery.

I don't know how you distribute services over such a range of geography and climatic zones without nodes and sub nodes. The population size is not really relevant is it, it's the size of the country and the distribution of needs that cripples our delivery methods. UK and France are small geographically by comparison.

Taking away any part of it means other parts grow - the only real problem we have is standardisation (and over regulation) across all the states.

Maybe that's just an overly simplistic view though.

We live in a Democracy where each one of us has a Vote.

The Vote is worth money. I know it because, time ago, two people offered to buy my Vote, one in exchange for spaghetti and the other wanted to give me a live fish for it.

Many people do not know this and when somebody asks for their Vote, they do not ask ‘how much do you give me for it?’.

The person who wants our Vote (Politician) may say to us; “I promise that for your Vote I will do this-or-that for you”.

OK! How long does it take and how much money you want for doing this-or-that for us?

Lastly, what can we do if you are inept and cause us damage instead of service? Do you agree to perform menial duties to pay for fixing the damaged this-or-that until it is made right?

Democracy is where Justice is and we should be just to everyone including our Politicians.

E. Sykes,

If you lived in the unitary country of France (640,000 square kilometres compared with Australia’s 7.7 million), you would live under five tiers of government – the European Union, the national government, the regional government, the department government and the municipal government.

If you lived in the unitary country of the United Kingdom, you would live under at least four (and, in some parts of the country, five) tiers of government – the European Parliament, the UK Parliament, regional assemblies (elected in the case of Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Greater London, unelected in the rest of the country) and unitary local authorities or, in some places, both county councils and district councils.

Estelles,

New Zealand has three tiers of elected government – national, regional and local.

Russia, China, Brazil, Canada, the USA and India, being all the countries anywhere near Australia in size, have at least one intermediate level of government. Australia is just one of 80 countries in the world with more than 10 million people, all of which have at least three tiers of government, as does every one of the 51 countries of more than 500,000 square kilometres.

Our states protect freedom by making power diffuse. They also allow decisions to be made closer to the people affected by them. We need more states, not fewer.